"If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking." "You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming." "When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering?  No, it wouldn't.  They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things.  Suffering drives you deeper.  The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form.  A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego--but not until you suffer consciously.

Humanity is destined to go beyond suffering, but not in the way the ego thinks.  One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions, one of its many deluded thoughts is "I should not have to suffer."  Sometimes the thought gets transferred to someone close to you:  "My child should not have to suffer."  That thought itself lies at the root of suffering.  Suffeirng has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.  The man on the cross is an archetypal image.  He is every man and every woman.  As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up.  When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fct that you suffer consciously.  You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent.  In the midst of conscious suffering there is already the transmutation.  The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.

"Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or rather what life does through you. There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One with Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer and you are the dance."

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now.

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it.  After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile.  He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon.  According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself.  When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you.  Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.  This is what great artists sense and succeed in conveying in their art.  Van Gogh didn't say: "That's just an old chair."  He looked, and looked, and looked.  He sensed the Beingness of the chair.  Then he sat in front of the canvas and took up the brush.  The chair itself would have sold for the equivalent of a few dollars.  The painting of that same chair today would fetch in excess of $25 million.

Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings' perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves.  Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.  How do you know this is the experience you need?  Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment"

The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious.  When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it.  Don't take the ego too seriously.  When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile.  At times you may even laugh.  How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long?  Above all, know that the ego isn't personal.  It isn't who you are.  If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.